The Parkway is a 469 mile lifeline for numerous gateway communities that dot its path. Recognizing the immense potential of these communities, the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation engaged DbD to develop this regional two-state plan, which involved extensive meeting facilitation and detailed communication with over 600 participants throughout the region.
The Summit and The Strategy
Our public engagement process culminated with the Blue Ridge Rising Summit that united leaders and stakeholders across the two-state region. The summit offered an opportunity to provide a discourse around the action plan, ensuring community voices are heard and integrated.
The final action plan includes a custom Resilience Ranking Index for the Blue Ridge Rising region— a tool that will help prioritize and allocate funding and support where it’s needed most. Additionally, the action plan will include recommendations to enhance the 6 key areas of marketing, visitor experience, education, natural resource protection, advocacy and capacity building.
Visual Storytelling
Success for this project centered on maximizing community engagement. To ensure this, our team focused on creating engaging and diverse content, including two videos, a website, and ultimately a planning document filled with stunning images. Our team took multiple trips up and down one of the most scenic stretches of pavement on the East Coast to capture the parkway in all of its glory.
Brand
Identity
Blue Ridge Rising isn’t just about boosting tourism—it’s about fostering a shared identity. Our branding efforts focus on developing a strong, cohesive regional voice that transcends state and county borders. We’re creating a future where the Blue Ridge Parkway not only connects people to nature but also serves as a gateway to vibrant, thriving communities.
Our bold, three-color design, highlights the area’s mountainous features while letting the orange sunrise pop out of the page. The fonts are a nod to the timeless identity of the National Park Service. Together the elements come together to rise from the page just as the Parkway itself seems to rise above the valley’s high on a ridge.
Website
Complete with a project website, plan brand, outreach video, and extensive public engagement, Blue Ridge Rising demonstrates an elevated commitment to client and community-centric development.
Community Engagement
The heart of this project focuses on gathering the aspirations and concerns of gateway community leaders to establish a unified regional vision and voice. This involved a year-long Parkway road trip, facilitating 30 community meetings and 7 regional meetings in the heart of the communities themselves.
Our team, alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, has been fully immersed in this initiative, traveling the Parkway’s length and breadth. These meetings have been critical in capturing the dreams and concerns of the locals, setting the stage for a united regional vision.
Destination by Design partnered with the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation to develop Blue Ridge Rising, a comprehensive regional strategic plan advancing travel and tourism, outdoor recreation, and economic development across 29 counties and gateway communities spanning Virginia and North Carolina. The plan includes a custom Resilience Ranking Index to help prioritize funding and support, alongside recommendations across six key areas: marketing, visitor experience, education, natural resource protection, advocacy, and capacity building.
Across Virginia and North Carolina, tourism planning and land use planning come together most effectively at a regional scale, where a single 469-mile corridor connects dozens of independent gateway communities. Blue Ridge Rising reflects that scope, pairing extensive regional and comprehensive planning with a public engagement process that reached over 600 participants through 30 community meetings and 7 regional meetings across the two-state footprint.
A plan spanning two states and 29 counties only works if every community feels ownership over the result. Blue Ridge Rising was built on that principle, culminating in the Blue Ridge Rising Summit, which brought together leaders and stakeholders from across the region to shape the final action plan and unite gateway communities under a shared regional identity and voice that transcends state and county lines.
Tourism planning is the process of developing a strategic roadmap that identifies a region’s tourism and outdoor recreation assets and recommends investments to strengthen its visitor economy. For the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, that meant a year-long public engagement process, a custom Resilience Ranking Index, and a full brand identity and website, all designed to help gateway communities along the Parkway prioritize funding and present a united regional vision.
The Blue Ridge Parkway stretches 469 miles through Virginia and North Carolina, connecting 29 counties and their gateway communities along one of the most scenic roadways on the East Coast. That geographic breadth made a unified regional plan essential, giving communities from small mountain towns to cities like Asheville a shared framework for tourism growth and resilience.
